An Explanatory Model of Jury Verdicts in Medical MalpracticeCases

为了提高我们对纠纷转化和民事诉讼制度的认识，需要对民事陪审团判决进行系统的研究。对民事司法制度的许多批评都是基于对陪审团裁决模式的性质和原因的假设，特别是在医疗事故案件和产品责任案件等特定类型的案件中的裁决规模。安德鲁斯和丹尼尔斯博士的经验研究通过设计和纵向评估一个多变量生态模型，使用来自11个州48个县的20世纪80年代初的数据，通过对裁决的汇总分析来解释医疗事故陪审团案件的实际结果模式。他们对理解陪审团做出什么决定以及为什么作出决定的贡献比陪审团案件的数量更重要，因为陪审团的裁决在决定通过更非正式程序处理的大多数民事诉讼的结果方面具有非常大的影响力。

To enhance our understanding of dispute transformation and the civil litigation system more generally, systematic study of civil jury verdicts is needed. Much criticism of the civil justice system is based on presumptions about the nature and causes of patterns of jury verdicts, especially the sizes of awards in particular types of cases such as medical malpractice cases and products liability cases. By devising and evaluating, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, a multivariate ecological model using data from 48 counties in ll states for the early 1980s, Drs. Andrews and Daniels' empirical study develops an explanation of patterns of actual outcomes in medical malpractice jury cases through the aggregate analysis of awards. Their contribution to understanding what decisions are made by juries and why is important beyond the numbers of jury cases because jury verdicts are very influential in determining the outcomes of the majority of civil lawsuits handled through more informal processes.